Bricked iPhones prompt Class action lawsuits

by James

It’s the next logical step that I’m sure Cupertino is prepared for. The Giz reports that a California man has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple for the updates that bricked thousands of unlocked iPhones, rendering the four to six hundred dollar handsets unusable. This is nothing new as lawsuits are popping up faster than weeds in my front yard. But what makes this cause of action interesting is that the plaintiff is asking a judge to permanently bar Apple from selling locked iPhones. This not only has repercussions in Cupertino, but for every cellphone company that sells locked handsets at a discount, subsidizing the upfront costs in order to lock customers into long tern cellphone contracts.

The basis of the lawsuit is the so-called “Cartwright Act,” that is designed to allow consumers to use any phone with any cell phone service. Analysts are of the opinion that unless lawyers can prove that Apple was acting maliciously and not merely defending their ongoing revenue-sharing relationship with AT&T, the lawsuit won’t get very far. Still, with as much as 10% of sold iPhones now working as six hundred dollar paperweights, will judges be able to ignore it?